Landfills smell, and so it is not surprising that landfills produce methane gas. If released into the atmosphere, methane gas is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Yikes! Methane gas can also pollute groundwater and potentially explode. Therefore, landfills are required to destroy the methane gas and many do it by burning it off into a flare.
A little over 2 years ago, Ada County in Idaho decided to make some money off of this powerful gas. Partnering with G2 Energy, now part of Foristar, the company installed 2 engines at the Ada County landfill to turn the methane gas into energy which it sold to Idaho Power. Each engine generates enough energy to power 2,400 homes. Yay, for green power!
Since installing the engines, the Ada County landfill can now pay for all of its operations without state tax money and has made a revenue totaling $600,000 from the methane gas. Not bad for trash.
Although I want there to be less trash in the world, I like that the Ada County landfill, along with 400 other landfills in the U.S.A, are using trash to make money and decrease pollution to the environment.
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Nice post, Kate. Waste Management (wm.com) does this also, and they may even have landfills in Florida that utilizes the methane. See their web site: http://wm.com/wm/environmental/renewable_energy.asp
Sunshines last blog post..Landfills, an Excellent Source of Energy
Way to go Idaho!!!
this is a great example of innovation trumping wasteful burning. There is a lot of great ideas of how it turn landfill garbage into energy!!! thanks for the article.
check out the PWU energy plan at
abetterenergyplan.ca
skylers last blog post..The Stupidest Car Ever
Check out an award-winning landfill make-over in Spain, outside Barcelona! http://tinyurl.com/92n9ja
Joans last blog post..Giving Up Plastic Bags
is this a good science project?
Emily: This could be a great science project, but it might be hard to get access to a real live landfill. Perhaps something on a smaller scale would work better? It would be a ton of work and probably difficult to pull off, but nothing is impossible! Shoot us an email and maybe we can help you pick out a good project.
Sweden biogas Runs Buses, cars, trucks!
SvenskBiogas, which produces, distributes and sells biogas for transportation in eastern Sweden. Each year the company takes 50,000 tons of a stomach-churning mixture of slaughterhouse waste, human waste and seized alcohol and turns it into clean-burning biogas. See: http://www.sweden.se/templates/cs/Article____14363.aspx
But: somehow, Americans have missed this neat trick and are polluting lakes rivers and ocean fronts as we speak! President Obama, there ought to be a Law!
This reminds me a bit about the plasma arc project that’s been going on in Florida. Using an arc of super-heated plasma, they burn the waste in the landfill to produce an energy-producing stuff called syngas. What doesn’t get burned is reduced to a harmless slag, which can be used for building materials.
Gabriel Gadflys last blog post..Poetry Made From Spam?